Galaxy
M85 (M85)
In Coma Berenices (Com) • Magnitude 9.2 • 7.1 arcminutes
Open the free AstroPlanner with M85 pre-selected, scored against your telescope, location, and the live cloud forecast.
The northernmost bright galaxy in the Virgo Cluster, a lenticular galaxy that recently merged with another galaxy — the aftermath is still visible as a faint outer "shell" of stars rippling through its halo. The merger happened roughly 1 billion years ago, and the galaxy is still quietly "ringing" from the impact.
M85 at a glance
| Catalog IDs | M85, N 4382 |
| Type | Galaxy |
| Constellation | Coma Berenices (Com) |
| Right ascension | 12h 25m 23s |
| Declination | +18° 11' 24" |
| Apparent magnitude | 9.15 |
| Surface brightness | 13.0 mag/arcsec² |
| Angular size | 7.1 × 5.2 arcmin |
| Max altitude at 45°N | 63° |
| Best imaging months | Dec, Jan, Feb |
How to image M85
M85 sits in the constellation Coma Berenices at right ascension 12h 25m 23s and declination +18° 11' 24". To frame and integrate it well, AstroPlanner will compute the optimal moonless window for tonight from your location, the field-of-view fit against your sensor and focal length, the suggested total integration time given your aperture and sky Bortle class, and a cloud-aware schedule that drops it from the plan if your nearest cloud forecast spike overlaps the best altitude window. As a galaxy, M85 needs the darkest skies you can find: surface brightness, not just apparent magnitude, drives whether it will lift out of the gradient.